


The Joker and The Queen

by GoddessofBirth



Series: The Compact [1]
Category: Revolution (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, And if you don't think Jeremy and Lydia would make a badass team then you are wrong, Canon Divergent after 2x07 Dead Man Walking, Don't blame me my characters do what they want, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Romance, background Miloe, background petopher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessofBirth/pseuds/GoddessofBirth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He pads into the room, slipping up behind her on quiet feet.  He's a foot or so away, a hand reached out to touch her, when she says in a bored voice, “I know you're there.”  She looks over her shoulder with one impeccably arched eyebrow.  “Which is good.  Because if you'd made me ruin my notes I would have kicked you in the balls.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Joker and The Queen

**Author's Note:**

> If you're totally lost, you probably didn't read The Compact. You should probably do that before you read this one.

 

 

He will never get over the fact they have fresh peanut butter. In the middle of the goddamn woods, well over the Mason-Dixon line, they've got fresh motherfucking peanut butter. He sticks another spoonful in his mouth, scraps his teeth over the bowl of the spoon, and chews noisily before swallowing. The production of the peanut butter isn't particularly miraculous, that's just a matter of grinding and sweat. It's the successful harvest of a crop of peanuts, out of climate and out of time, that's the real coup.

 

Of course, it had been Lydia who had figured it out. Jeremy likes to think if Bass and Miles had had her on their side, the Monroe Republic would have succeeded in taking down the Hale-Argent Nation, werewolves be damned. But they hadn't, and they didn't, and he supposes that worked out well for him in the long run.

 

She's sitting at her desk in what is, for lack of a better word, the lab, transcribing notes into a binder. Beakers filled with one chemical or another litter the tables in front of her – possibly ingredients for a new kind of flesh melting bomb, or maybe just fixings for a different color of lipstick. With Lydia, one never knew.

 

He pads into the room, slipping up behind her on quiet feet. He's a foot or so away, a hand reached out to touch her, when she says in a bored voice, “I know you're there.” She looks over her shoulder with one impeccably arched eyebrow. “Which is good. Because if you'd made me ruin my notes I would have kicked you in the balls.”

 

He grins unrepentantly and comes around to sit on the corner of her desk. “No you wouldn't. You like them just how they are.” She's far too young for him, barely twenty one, and forged out of the fires of Peter's ill fated power trip, and he'd told her that, time and time again, in the weeks and months since he'd come here. But he'd challenge anyone to hold out against Lydia Martin once she set her mind to something, and yeah, okay, he's not too stubborn to admit he's glad that something was him.

 

She eyes him imperiously. “Wouldn't I?”

 

He considers before shrugging in concession. “Okay, you would. But then you wouldn't get to hear the news.” Her eyes light up and he tugs her out of the chair to settle her hips between his legs.

 

“Tell me,” she demands, linking her arms around his neck.

 

“I just got done speaking with Peter and Chris.” He teases her by letting the silence sit, pausing just long enough that she gets impatient and does that bitchy little head tilt he loves so much.

 

“Aaaand...?”

 

“And they're going to go find them.”

 

“ _Yes!”_ She does a fist pump and kisses him, hard and fast. “I told you.”

 

He gives her a look. “Pretty sure _I_ told you, darlin'.”

 

She hums noncommittally. “If it makes you feel better, dear.”

 

Her hair tangles between his fingertips when he tilts her head back to kiss her, and he coaxes it smooth as he nudges her nose with his and feels her smile against his mouth. For Jeremy, life since the blackout has been a twisted up mess of good and bad and paranoia and fear. It's been the gaining of two brothers and the bitter loss of both. It's been building a sarcasm-laced wall so thick no one would ever see how each and every betrayal of loyalty had chipped at him. It's been the continual frustration that he still can't give up on the two idiotic blockheads that had both saved his life and, in the end, been responsible for his so-called death.

 

Luckily, Jeremy has always been a survivor. And he's made it to here, to this fractured fairy tale of a nation, where for once no one routinely plots anyone's overthrow or death, and where the citizens stay out of desire and not out of _fear_. It's all the good intentions Miles and Bass had started with, and the culmination of everything the Monroe Republic had killed. That it comes with a few odd little quirks – werewolves and former hunters and twelve year olds who can decapitate a man without blinking an eye – doesn't bother him at all, because it also comes with _Lydia._ Everything about _here_ , the place where he's ultimately landed, is worth saving, and if he can save Miles and Bass along with it, then so much the better. But only after he's broken both of their noses.

 

Fucking dicks.

 

They rest their foreheads together for a moment and then Lydia pulls back, keeping her fingers linked behind his neck. “And I'm going, right?”

 

“Of course. They'll need you to explain all that technical shit about the pendants. Might be the only way those two stubborn asses will agree to come.”

 

She immediately picks up on what he hasn't said. “But they're not letting you go with us.”

 

He shakes his head, running a thumb soothingly along her jaw. “No. I'm still not controlling the shift enough. I'd be as much a danger as a help out there. At least for now.” It's true, although he personally thinks Peter and Chris are also half afraid he'll get it in his head to run off somewhere with Miles and Bass instead of coaxing them to come here. Which is just fucking stupid, because it's not like he'd leave without Lydia. But Jeremy is used to being surrounded by emotionally stunted idiots.

 

She doesn't like it, he can tell by the look on her face, but she understands necessity so doesn't argue. He dips down and plucks at her bottom lip with his teeth to distract her, then mutters, “Although if Stiles makes one more joke about old dogs and new tricks, I may have to rip his head off.”

 

She laughs, as he intended, and shakes a finger at him. “No killing Stiles.”

 

He smiles crookedly back, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “I would never deprive you of your best friend. Annoying as he is.”

 

“ _Allison_ is my best friend. Stiles...is my partner in crime.”

 

“And here I thought _I_ was your partner in crime. I'm mortally wounded.” He clutches theatrically at his chest.

 

Her eyes turn sultry as she drags a finger up his chest. “Don't be stupid. You're my partner in _everything_.”

 

“At least until I get too old and you have to put me out to pasture.” He'd meant it to come out light, a joke, but a little too much of the truth seeps through. He knows she's meant for better things and that their relationship comes with an expiration date, but he's usually pretty good at pretending otherwise. He doesn't like to let the future ruin the now.

 

Her eyes narrow and she steps back with an angry hiss. “Do you really think I'm that shallow? Like all these other idiots? I thought you saw me better than that.”

 

He catches her wrist before she leaves entirely. “Come on, darlin'. Don't. It was just a joke. We can laugh about it when I'm ninety and you're spoon feeding me soup on my death bed.” He can tell she doesn't buy it, her eyes still flashing angrily, and so he drops the pretense entirely.

 

“Lydia,” he says quietly. “You're leaving in the morning. I don't want to fight. Not now.”

 

She won't forget what he said, and they _will_ fight about it later – he knows her too well to think otherwise – but for now she concedes, letting him pull her back into his arms and burrowing her face in his neck. “We could be gone a long time,” she says, her voice muffled against his skin. “Having to track both of them down.”

 

“Nah,” he dismisses the possibility carelessly. “Won't be that long. You find one, you'll find the other.”

 

She lifts her head and peers at him doubtfully. “I thought you said they were trying to kill each other.”

 

“I said _trying_ , not _succeeding_. Miles and Bass -” Christ, it would take days to properly explain the co-dependent disaster those two were; honestly, Jeremy thinks half the shit Bass pulled after Miles defected had just been an attempt to get his attention. Instead of getting into that, he takes a shortcut. “- they're kind of like our illustrious co-presidents, only with even more emotional constipation and idiocy.”

 

Lydia blinks rapidly. “I didn't think that was actually possible.”

 

“Oh, just wait until you meet them.” He brushes her hair away from her face. “Darlin', listen. I don't know what's happened to them since the bombs. I don't know what they've done or what they've been through. I don't know the condition they're in.” He considers his words before he continues. “They're good enough guys. Few better to have at your back in a fight. Hell, Bass is even pretty sane as long as he's got Miles there to remind him. But the two of them... If either one ever thinks the other might be in danger, they get a little too kill happy for my liking and they don't care too much about the collateral damage. So just...be careful around them, okay? I'd like to have you back in one piece, and I'd hate to have to kill one of them right after we've had our little reunion.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “You're so romantic. Don't worry,” she winks at him, “I love you, too. So I'll let it slide that you just implied I'm not capable of protecting myself.”

 

She is. He knows she is. Even beyond the deadly bombs she whips up – he thinks Nora will be damn impressed if she's still with Miles – there's the poisons and the garrotes and the fact that next to Allison she's probably the deadliest soldier with a blade. But skills only count so much when weighed against the sheer insanity Miles and Bass display when they're protecting each other.

 

“Just promise me, okay?” When she opens her mouth to protest, he stops it up with his own, kissing her slow and steady and hiding all the worry he feels about sending her out there without him to watch her back. He'd had plenty of practice hiding those kinds of emotions before he ever came here though, so by the time he pulls back and kisses her forehead, he can smile, devil may care, and nudge her calf with his toe.

 

“Humor me, darlin'. You can take it out of my hide later.”

 

“Fine.” She straightens and crosses her arms impatiently. “I promise. Happy now?”

 

“Indubitably.”

 

“Using ten dollar words, Mr. Baker?” She raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Are you trying to impress me, distract me, or turn me on?”

 

“All three, darlin'. All three. Is it working?”

 

She laughs, stepping back and tugging him to his feet. “Always.”

 

“Well thank God. I'd hate to think that Princeton education was wasted on nothing.” God, Lydia would have shone there, or somewhere like MIT, if the world hadn't all gone to hell. “Now can we get out of here so I can say goodbye to you properly?” He waggles his eyes lecherously. “You know, less clothes, more moaning?”

 

She rolls her eyes again, like she does with all his horrible pick up lines, but it's fond, and familiar, and her eyes sparkle as she does it. “Give me five minutes to finish up. Can you bring me that beaker of sulfuric acid?”

 

“Anything for you, Ms. Martin. Anything for you.” He fetches the beaker and returns to his perch on the desk, fascinated, as always, with watching her brain in action.

 

Five minutes stretches to thirty minutes stretches to two hours, but it's worth it for the look on her face when she has makes a breakthrough on a formula she's been fighting for over a month. She squeals happily and throws her pencil across the room and then laughs when he picks her up and swings her around in a circle.

 

“Now?” he asks.

 

“Now,” she confirms.

 

They do at least remember to lock the door as she drags him from the room.

 


End file.
